Discovery News writer Benjamin Radford explores the psychological reasons the student at Oberlin who made the sighting may have jumped to the conclusion that the drapped figure was dressed in Klan regalia instead of considering alternative explanations (like a toga from an “Animal House” celebration):

One powerful influence on our perceptions is our expectations. A well-known example of this can be seen in the image …

The same ambiguous symbol can be interpreted in very different ways, depending on the context. Read vertically, the symbol in the middle of the picture can be easily read as the capital letter B, while read horizontally the symbol can be easily read as the number 13. Neither answer is wrong; both interpretations are correct within their context. But the context makes all the difference.

How does this apply to the Klansman seen at Oberlin College? There were at several contextual factors that led the eyewitness to associate the figure with the Klan. Most importantly, the campus had recently experienced a string of events characterized as hate crimes, with flyers and graffiti targeting African-Americans, gays, and Jews appearing on campus.

The events were widely reported and triggered much discussion on campus about the presence of hate groups.

Radford’s review provides further explanations for the confusion:

..the location played a role in the misidentification: The white-clad figure was not seen outside a local pizza place or library, but instead outside the Afrikan Heritage House, the building on campus most closely associated with African-Americans. It’s unlikely that if the same woman had been seen outside a campus synagogue she would have been interpreted as a member of the Klan.

Then there’s the fact that the eyewitness probably didn’t know exactly what an actual KKK outfit looks like. …

Our brains often “fill in” details with what we expect to see –not necessarily what we actually see — and we tend to bias our reports accordingly. Thus a person wrapped in, or even carrying, a light-colored blanket can become a Klan outfit.

Based on Radford’s analysis, it would not be surprising to hear more “reports” of suspicious characters, as expectations have been created.

In an atmosphere like Oberlin, what you see is not always what you get.

One has to wonder to what extent the pressures at a progressive institution like Oberlin to be race-consious contribute not only to visual misperceptions, but to the willingness of some students to create incidents and events for the purpose of proving what they believe to be true about racism in society.

I have come to the conclusion, after much first hand experience, that the race-obsessed individual will be the first person to make a distinction between people based on race.

I call this, the “Smelly Fart” test, as in “Who smelt it, dealt it.”

While real racism may always exist, overt racism of the kinds that are best known in the media always seem to turn out to be manufactured hoaxes by some race obsessed liberal, hoping to “Raise awareness of racism” by….wait for it….perpetrating and perpetuating racism.

How we get away from racism, is to not ignore it, but to not codify it in statistical distinctions, or in distinctions between race which denote hatred towards an idividual.

For example, if there is a black man and a white man, let us get away from the distinction in skin color, and say there are just two men. This goes for “hyphenated” nationalities as well. I don’t see “hyphen-americans” I see Americans. Or what not. It’s the fact that we have codified racism in our attempts to make up for past errors which perpetuates the problem, in my opinion.

I chalk it up to educators and race-baiters who make a cottage industry out of identifying and protesting racism. We have come a long way, only to be hamsrung by those who wish to perpetuate the problem for ilicit, immoral gain.

I know Ben Radford from my days running a scientific skepticism website and discussion board. One term basically describes what he’s talking about: pareidolia – seeing patterns in otherwise chaotic or unorganized observations. Example: face of Jesus seen in tree bark, burnt waffles, water stains and the like.